“The term ‘music industry’ is a misnomer. In reality the ‘music industry’ is not one industry, it is several independent industries. This is an important distinction because if we say that there is a “crisis in the music industry” it suggests an equal amount of misfortune for everyone (musicians, the recording industry, the live-music industry, Internet radio, etc.) and in fact this not true. Misuse of the term ‘music industry’ distorts the reality of the situation. For example:” —> click on this.

OHHHHHHHHHH!!! Ha, record industry sucks and I have to change some words on this blog now…

“Duncan Freeman, the man behind Band Metrics, has added another venture, MusicScout. It’s a free location aware mobile music smartphone app that enables you to express your thoughts about the band you’re watching in real-time from the venue. The Android app is available now, and the iPhone app will be available once approved by Apple in about 2 weeks.” -> Read ON!

“For all the talk of the MySpace-assisted success of Arctic Monkeys or Lily Allen, it’s hard not to think that one of the web’s biggest effects might actually be the opposite of the kind of will-of-the-people surge that powered those artists into the limelight. Instead, the net might have made music a more scattered, microcosmic experience, where a wealth of blogs and messageboards mean that anything, no matter how recherche, can find an audience – just not a stadium-filling, platinum-selling one.” Read on traveller

In this feature, The Guardian’s Alexis Petridus uses a “parlour game” to give perspective on how music can change over a decade, or in the case of the noughties, how it didn’t change. What changed instead was the industry and the technology. But why not the music?

At a guess I’d say the internet is to blame (as usual). It makes old musical movements easy to peer into. People can enjoy a large range of songs that hark back to specific time periods which have to be interpreted as best we can, with many re-inventing sounds and fashions that align with their personalities the most appropriately. In our constrainingly self aware times, pop music, like a Tarantino film, is a cultural pastiche.

“In the most recent sign that Apple is looking at alternative ways for people to store and play their digital music, the company has agreed to buy Lala, a four-year-old start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., a person with knowledge of the deal said Friday.” – Read more

Apple take on music streaming business alongside their relatively successful (As opposed to record companies) iTunes system of customers purchasing songs individually and downloading.

“Faced with shrinking market shares, fragmenting audiences, disappearing brick-and-mortar recorded music retailers and a continued double-digit decline in compact disc sales, Canadian independent record labels that exclusively sold and distributed CDs until a few years ago are acting as agents and booking concert tours for their artists.” – Read on here